sprits-it! — Awesome Speed-Reading

sprits-it! is an open source web application which allows speed-reading of arbitrary web pages in a browser.

The speed reading technique is currently based on the ideas of Spritz described in their blog. At the time of this writing Spritz had virtually nothing to offer to iOs device users to play with. This project is targeted specifically on usability in Safari and Chrome mobile browsers but should ultimately work well on other platforms.

Screenshots

 

Features

• Speed-read any web page in your browser (well, almost any) — also on mobile;
• Configurable reading speed, play/pause/rewind, nite mode, reading progress bar;
• Settings, text and reading position can be saved in browser local storage and restored next time you visit;
• Uses Readability™ technology for text extraction and cleanup (HTML boilerplate removal);
• Hyphenation for long words with language auto-detection;
• Punctuation aware;
• Easy-to-install bookmarklet;
• Right-to-left language support (עברית and العربية);
• eBook reading (ePub format, experimental);
• PDF text extraction (experimental);
• Coming soon: word and context highlighting and navigation.

Demo

Live demo is hosted on Heroku here:

http://sprits-it.herokuapp.com/read

To read a web page at page_url use the following GET query: http://sprits-it.herokuapp.com/read?url=page_url

For example:

http://sprits-it.herokuapp.com/read?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spritzinc.com%2Fthe-science

Alternatively, you migh just grab a bookmarklet in the settings section of the demo.

Official project homepage is hosted by GitHub Pages here.

Installation instructions

Prerequisites

1. Get your Readability™ API token at https://www.readability.com/developers/api;
2. Optionally, if you'd like to track your site with Google Analytics then get a Tracking ID at http://www.google.com/analytics.

Cloning the repo

Clone with --recursive flag — this flag is needed for git to recursively fetch all the submodule dependencies for the project. E.g.:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/my-user/sprits-it.git

Running locally with Flask dev server

• Change to project root folder:

cd sprits-it/

• Create virtualenv for the project:

> virtualenv venv
> . venv/bin/activate
> pip install -r app/requirements.txt

• Set your Readability API token and, optionally, Google Analytics Tracking ID values. There are two alternatives for doing so: either set them as the environment variables, or directly in app/.env file:

> export READABILITY_API_KEY=1234567890123456789012345678901234567890
> export GOOG_ANALYTICS_ID=UU-12345678-9

> cat app/.env
READABILITY_API_KEY=1234567890123456789012345678901234567890
GOOG_ANALYTICS_ID=UU-12345678-9

• Run Flask dev server from the app folder:

> cd app/
> python spritsit.py

• Visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Deploying on Heroku

If you are new to Heroku platform, visit the "Getting Started" guide at https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/quickstart. Here we'll assume you have already set up your app's empty Heroku repo under heroku-app/.

Note: git manipulations below are needed due to the fact that the code should be imported from a foreign git repo (hosted on GitHub) to native Heroku repo, and moreover, because the sources (such as Procfile, etc.) must be placed in the root folder instead of in app/ subfolder

heroku-app/> git remote -v
heroku  git@heroku.com:heroku-app.git (fetch)
heroku  git@heroku.com:heroku-app.git (push)

• Import sprits-it sources from the GitHub repo:

heroku-app/> git remote add -f sprits-it  https://github.com/my-user/sprits-it.git
heroku-app/> git merge -s ours --no-commit sprits-it/master

• Move app sources to the root:

heroku-app/> git mv app/* app/.env .

• Now, edit .gitmodules to fix module locations. That is, open .gitmodules and replace every occurence of app/lib/ with lib/;

• Re-initialize submodules:

heroku-app/> git submodule init
heroku-app/> git submodule sync
heroku-app/> git submodule update

• Create venv as described in Heroku documentation:

heroku-app/> virtualenv venv
heroku-app/> . venv/bin/activate
heroku-app/> pip install -r requirements.txt

• Set your Readability API token and, optionally, Google Analytics Tracking ID as described in the previous section

• Run local dev server:

heroku-app/> foreman start

• To test the result, visit http://localhost:5000 in your browser.

• Before deploying the app to Heroku server, set the following config var to instruct the app that it is running in 'production' environment (as opposed to the local dev server):

heroku-app/> heroku config:set HEROKU=1

• Commit and deploy regularly as described at https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-python, e.g.:

heroku-app/> git add -A .
heroku-app/> git commit
heroku-app/> git push heroku master

Deploying on Google App Engine

The following assumes GAE SDK is located in google_appengine/.

• Clone the repo as described above:

google_appengine/> git clone --recursive https://github.com/my-user/sprits-it.git
google_appengine/> cd sprits-it/

• Install the requirements to app/lib/ folder:

sprits-it/> pip install -r app/requirements_gae.txt -t app/lib/

• Set your Readability API token and, optionally, Google Analytics Tracking ID as described in the previous section

• Run local dev server:

sprits-it/> python ../dev_appserver.py app

• To test the result, visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

• Deploy to GAE (for instructions see here).

Changelog

Currently development betas only — simply because the project lacks sufficient user base to be tested extensively. Sorry… and you can help fixing that!

• v0.5.1-beta
  • Full installation instructions;
• v0.5-beta (pre-release)
  • Added PDF handling;
• v0.4-beta (pre-release)
  • Added basic ePub handling;
  • Minor fixes in RLT support and browser detection;
• v0.3-beta
  • Right-to-left language support (Hebrew and Arabic);
  • Improved language auto-detection;
  • “Modern” browser detection, reject old browsers such as IE8;
• v0.2-beta
  • Hyphenation and punctuation handling;
  • Improved text extraction;
• v0.1-beta — Initial release.

Project Motto

This project is managed according to the following book (in Russian):

Cheers!

Contributors

The bootstrap code was imported from a CodePen snippet at http://codepen.io/the-happy-hippo/pen/aDHrl which in turn had been forked from a great Pen by Charlotte Dann at http://codepen.io/pouretrebelle/pen/reGKw with javascript cherrypicking for Readability text extraction from OpenSpritz project by Rich Jones(@miserlou).

Up-to-date Gist from codepen can be found at https://gist.github.com/the-happy-hippo/9474002.

Here is the description from Charlotte Dann for her original Pen:

Use Spritz right now! Options for speed, localStorage saving, jog forward/backward, text size and dark/light theme, also with keyboard controls and progress bar. You'll never need to read conventionally again. localStorage implementation by Keith Wyland, thanks Keith!

Contributing Projects

• OpenSpritz - OpenSpritz project by @miserlou
• Spritz Speed Reading V2 - Codepen Spritz project by @Charlotte Dann
• Spray - Bootstrap extension of OpenSpritz by @chaimpeck

Notice to Contributors

I have started this project purely for educational purposes while having virtually no prior background in web design (apart from plain old HTML tables of 90's).

If you find something stupid that I did — please don't blame me and never hesitate to point those things out so I can learn from them.

Disclaimer

sprits-it! is not affilated with Spritz Inc in any way. This is an open source, community created project based on publicly available information. We love you!